Photography keeps city man in the right frame of mind

August 9, 2014

Eddie Hanson, 71, of Woonsocket, has taken up a passion for photography, concentrating on street scenes of his beloved city. He has a display of his work in the lobby of the Southern New England Regional Cancer Center, 115 Cass Ave. in Woonsocket., where he is undergoing cancer treatment himself.
(Photo by Ernest A. Brown)

WOONSOCKET — Eddie Hanson has always viewed the world with a photographer’s eye, ever since his dad gave him his first camera 60 years ago – a Burke & James 2 ¼ × 3 ¼ – and “20 seconds” of instructions on how to use it.

Eleven years old at the time, Hanson ran down to Yvonne’s camera shop on Social Street where the kindly man behind the counter showed him how to load the film and adjust the lens settings.

“Then I went over to the old St. James Hotel and started taking shots from the veranda,” says Hanson. “I fell in love with it. Having that camera in my hand felt natural, like I had always done it.”

He studied the different parts of the camera and read as much as he could about photography, learning about light, depth and composition. He also had the good fortune of being taken under the wing of a professional newspaper photographer who worked for the Woonsocket Call at the time.

“He walked up to me while I was taking photographs one day and said ‘hey, you look like you know what you’re doing.’ So, he took me up to the Call’s photo room and taught me how to develop negatives and make prints,” says Hanson. “At that point I realized that cameras and photography were going to be my life so I just kept on doing it.”